Knocked up or knocking in?
I’d heard of ‘knocked up’ before but I’d never heard of
‘knocking in’ until very recently. After
buying a new cricket bat for my eleven year old sports nut, we learnt that it
needed ‘knocking in.’ So having spent
forty quid on the bat and that
was the sale price, I wasn’t too keen on the thought of my son smashing it up
with a mallet. After You Tubing the
term, I decided that it was obviously a legitimate process. First the bat needed several coats of linseed
oil and then my budding English cricketer spent his free time ‘knocking his bat
in.’ He had rummaged about in the kitchen drawers and decided that the rounded
wooden end of my meat tenderiser would do the trick. He spent time before
school, after school and before bedtime ‘knocking it in.’ Much to the annoyance
of his teenage sister who wasn’t best pleased at being woken at 7am by what
sounded like the tapping of a giant woodpecker!
He then went off to his next
cricket training session with his ‘knocked in’ bat. He proudly showed it to his coach and team
mates. They explained to him that if the
bat has three bands on top of the handle, then it has already been ‘knocked
in.’ Who knew?! However his coach added
that a little extra ‘knocking in’ was good for the bat. My son now hits with his new, ‘knocked in’
bat and so far this season, it seems to be doing the trick. When it was his
turn to bat in last week’s match; he
secured the team’s winning runs to put them in the semi-finals of the Burton
Cup. Should I add that the bat almost
didn’t make the match? By the time I had put all three children in the car,
along with the picnic, rug, sweaters and raincoats and driven to the away
ground cricket venue;on arrival as my son got out of the car he chirped up, “Where’s
my cricket bag?!”
“AAAArrrrghhh!” But
that’s another story and I shan’t repeat what I said to him!
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